Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jun 1999, Greg Nowell wrote:
>
> > You are unaware with how "predatory tariffs" aka dumping work.
>
> I'm quite aware, thank you very much, but Japan Inc. did not follow the
> script written by Friedrich List. The keiretsu are not really about
> consumption, they're about production; consumption was driven during the
> post-WW II period by American military Keynesianism, and nowadays by
> global credit bubbles. Japan in 1950 was around one-tenth as rich as the
> USA; West Germany was only a third as wealthy as the US in 1960. So
> exports to the US were an obvious solution at that point. Nowadays, the
> situation is more complicated, because the keiretsu have become global
> production and trading networks, with facilities, plant and equipment
> across the planet, and the US, Japan and EU have become far more
> permeable to cross-investment than in any Manchester liberal's wildest
> dreams.
>
> One could argue that the soga shosha, the big trading companies of the
> keiretsu, were essentially the keiretsu's version of a consumption policy
> -- which makes sense, since much of the literature I've seen on Japan says
> that their service sector is highly labor-intensive and inefficient; the
> soga shosha were thus the monopolistic middlepeople, who squeezed captive
> consumers for funds which are then the seed-capital for fresh investment.
> I hear this is changing, though, as Japanese consumers are
> turning to hyperstores and discounters.
>
> -- Dennis
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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